Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 19.djvu/17

1867.&#93; "Did n't he say to Cain, 'Where is Abel, thy brother?

Nurse Byloe was getting very red in the face. She had had about enough of this talk between the two women. "I hope the Lord 'll take care of Myrtle Hazard fust, if she 's in trouble, 'n' wants help," she said; n' then look out for them that comes next. Y' 're too suspicious, Miss Badlam; y' 're too easy to believe stories. Myrtle Hazard was as pretty a child and as good a child as ever I see, if you did n't rile her; 'n' d'd y' ever see one o' them hearty, lively children, that had n't a sperrit of its own? For my part, I 'd rather handle one of 'em than a dozen o' them little waxy, weak-eyed, slim-necked creturs that always do what they tell 'em to, and die afore they 're a dozen year old; and never was the time when I 've seen Myrtle Hazard, sence she was my baby, but what it 's always been, 'Good mornin', Miss Byloe,' and, 'How do you do, Miss Byloe? I 'm so glad to see you.' The handsomest young woman, too, as all the old folks will agree in tellin' you, sence the time o' Judith Pride that was,—the Pride of the County they used to call her, for her beauty. Her great-grandma, y' know, Miss Cynthy, married old King David Withers. What I want to know is, whether anything has been heerd, and jest what 's been done about findin' the poor thing. How d' ye know she has n't fell into the river? Have they fired cannon? They say that busts the gall of drownded folks, and makes the corpse rise. Have they looked in the woods everywhere? Don't believe no wrong of nobody, not till y' must,—least of all of them that come o' the same folks, partly, and has lived with ye all their days. I tell y', Myrtle Hazard 's jest as innocent of all what y' 've been thinkin' about,—bless the poor child; she 's got a soul that 's as clean and sweet—well, as a pond-lily when it fust opens of a mornin', without a speck on it no more than on the fust pond-lily God Almighty ever made!"

That gave a turn to the two women's thoughts, and their handkerchiefs went up to their faces. Nurse Byloe turned her eyes quickly on Cynthia Badlam, and repeated her close inspection of every outline and every light and shadow in her figure. She did not announce any opinion as to the age or good looks or general aspect or special points of Miss Cynthia; but she made a sound which the books write humph! but which real folks make with closed lips, thus: m'!—a sort of half-suppressed labio-palato-nasal utterance, implying that there is a good deal which might be said, and all the vocal organs want to have a chance at it, if there is to be any talking.

Friends and neighbors were coming in and out; and the next person that came was the old minister, of whom, and of his colleague, the Rev. Joseph Bellamy Stoker, some account may here be introduced.

The Rev. Eliphalet Pemberton—Father Pemberton as brother ministers called him, Priest Pemberton as he was commonly styled by the country people—would have seemed very old, if the medical patriarch of the village had not been so much older. A man over ninety is a great comfort to all his elderly neighbors: he is a picket-guard at the extreme outpost; and the young folks of sixty and seventy feel that the enemy must get by him before he can come near their camp. Dr. Hurlbut, at ninety-two, made Priest Pemberton seem comparatively little advanced; but the college catalogue showed that he must be seventy-five years old, if, as we may suppose, he was twenty at the time of his graduation.

He was a man of noble presence always, and now, in the grandeur of his flowing silver hair and with the gray shaggy brows overhanging his serene and solemn eyes, with the slow gravity of motion and the measured dignity of speech which gave him the air of an old pontiff, he was an imposing personagje to look upon, and could be awful, if the occasion demanded it. His creed was of the sternest: he was